Charting the Course of Teaching and Learning in a Networked World

Michael Wesch: A Cultural Anthropologist Looks at Digital Technology

RECORDINGS:
Full Elluminate Recording: https://sas.elluminate.com/p.jnlp?psid=2009-05-26.1529.M.ACE02B5F35...
Audio: http://audio.edtechlive.com/foe/michaelwesch.mp3
Portable Video: http://audio.edtechlive.com/foe/michaelwesch.mp4
Chat Log: http://audio.edtechlive.com/foe/michaelwesch.rtf

Dubbed "the explainer" by Wired magazine, Michael Wesch is a cultural anthropologist exploring the impact of new media on society and culture. After two years studying the impact of writing on a remote indigenous culture in the rain forest of Papua New Guinea, he has turned his attention to the effects of social media and digital technology on global society. His videos on culture, technology, education, and information have been viewed by millions, translated in over 15 languages, and are frequently featured at international film festivals and major academic conferences worldwide. Wesch has won several major awards for his work, including a Wired Magazine Rave Award, the John Culkin Award for Outstanding Praxis in Media Ecology, and he was recently named an Emerging Explorer by National Geographic. He has also won several teaching awards, including the 2008 CASE/Carnegie U.S. Professor of the Year for Doctoral and Research Universities.

Professor Wesch's YouTube channel is at http://www.youtube.com/user/mwesch, and includes links to the following important videos: The Machine is Us/ing Us, A Vision of Students Today, A Portal to Media Literacy, Information R/evolution, An anthropological introduction to YouTube. He blogs at http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg, and his own list of full links is at http://ksuanth.weebly.com/wesch.html.

Date: Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern / 12am GMT (next day) (international times here)

Location: In Elluminate. Log in at http://tinyurl.com/learncentral-tv. The Elluminate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early.

To make sure that your computer is configured for Elluminate, please visit http://www.elluminate.com/support.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Steve Hargadon on May 26, 2009 at 10:43am: If you got the email that said Monday for this interview, that was an error. The interview is Tuesday, May 26th. :); ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Cathy Rodriguez on May 26, 2009 at 5:09pm: asking for a session name on tonight's talk, what is it?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jennifer Lubke on May 26, 2009 at 6:50pm: Cathy,

It's too late for this to help you tonight, but for future Elluminate sessions you might attend, "session name" actually refers to your preferred display name. For instance, I usually enter my first name and last initial. I was similarly confused by this step prior to my first Elluminate meeting. "Session name" is not clear at all!!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jennifer Lubke on May 26, 2009 at 6:53pm: Hello, FutureOfEducation community! I regret not being able to attend this interview and hope to listen to the archived material in the near future. Did anyone post a blog reaction following the interview? If so, please share your reflection or link. Or, share your reactions here. I'm eager to know what Steve and Mike discussed. Thanks!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Daniel Dage on May 27, 2009 at 4:19pm: I'll go ahead and give a bit of a response/reaction.

I've done a few Elluminate sessions before and I think this was the biggest one by far with nearly 250 people logged in at a time. As you can imagine, the chat box was going a million miles/second with comments and questions. That is one thing about this platform is when it gets really busy and interactive, it can almost get too rich!

Professor Wesch gave a bit of an overview of his work and the class that he teaches. He expanded on how he gets the students to collaborate and share using various web 2.0 tools. He confines the tools used to those that are free, which I'm sure his students really appreciate! He also gave a bit of an overview of how he structures the course. While it is mostly collaborative, project and inquiry-based, there are a few weeks when he steps in as the "sage on the stage" and delivers content through more direct instruction. No matter the modality, he seems to have a good grasp of how to make this work, even in a class of 200 or more. This was readily apparent during this session, where the hour whisked by all too quickly.

I think Professor Wesch made a lot of connections very early on, especially with YouTube and has continued to expand the dialog through the work he and his students are doing. Having work done at the University level, especially in regards to social media is a VERY critical step, I think, toward legitimizing it as an educational tool. One common discussion thread running through the chat room was that most public schools block most social networking sites. While students and teachers may use social networking extensively outside of school, it is pretty much forbidden within the school walls. No wonder kids hate school! School administrators do not have a feel for the shift that is happening as they are so fixed on the test scores and AYP. So Professor Wesch's work represents a hope for a future beyond NCLB and AYP. His videos certainly help spur a lot of thinking and discussion on using social tools for learning, teaching, creating and collaborating.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jennifer Lubke on May 28, 2009 at 2:35am: Thanks for sharing! I agree that Wesch's leadership at the university level is critical to helping teachers, and especially preservice teachers, see that these tools have the potential to enrich and extend traditional, F2F, classroom learning. I am looking forward to listening to the entire interview.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Andrew Hiskens on May 26, 2009 at 9:10pm: Steve:

Only just caught up with your emails about this - 10am Melbourne time is reasonably convenient (compared to those poor GMT people!) But I missed it today.

I (and millions others, I guess) have long been an admirer of Michael Wesch's videos.

Will you post a recording?

Best wishes,

Andrew; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Andrea on May 26, 2009 at 9:51pm: Wonderful discussion, and my first time to join and use Elluminate.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Steve Hargadon on May 28, 2009 at 11:40am: Although I posted the recordings at the top of this page, I'm not sure everyone realized they were there so I'm just drawing your attention to them! :)

Steve; ▶ Reply to This